Shortly after my first guitar lesson, I started playing along with “Sweet Virginia" and that was it. that same Christmas, and they were the first band I was obsessed with. My brother handed me a copy of Exile on Main St. It was a black Ovation Applause, with the plastic back. So he bought me my first guitar and I never looked back. It had never dawned on me that I could actually do this. He named all these things he saw me interested in, and when he said, “Play an instrument," my eyes lit up. My dad was a cool guy, and he said, “I cannot get you that Atari, because you're going to be interested in it for a couple of months and it'll gather dust in the closet. He's played with Ryan Adams and is a member of the Chris Robinson Brotherhood and Hard Working Americans.
Neal Casal put his own singer/songwriter career aside in the early 2000s to become a master at supporting other vocalists. I really was at a loss, and in a move to fit in with the other kids, just said, “Well, I want Atari." My dad asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I grew up in New Jersey, and this was the dawn of the '80s, as Atari games were just sweeping the nation. How did you first get into guitar? I started playing when I was 12. He talked about his early influences, the evolution of the Interludes project, sharing the stage with Phil Lesh and Bob Weir, and how playing Jerry Garcia's Wolf guitar changed his life. Furthermore, the music is included in the 12-CD/7-DVD box set of the Dead's entire Fare Thee Well run.Ĭasal spoke with Premier Guitar on a couple of occasions: once from his home in Ventura and once from Denver the morning after CRB's New Year's Eve show at Cervantes' Masterpiece. So Rhino Records decided to give the music a proper release: a two-CD set titled Interludes for the Dead.
Not the five hours Kreutzmann requested, but nearly four hours-a pretty stunning achievement in such a short time.Įven with all the attention focused on the four surviving core members of the Dead during their final shows together, the soundtrack created by Casal and his friends, a group now known as Circles Around the Sun, managed to generate a significant buzz online. Somehow, over the course of a mere two days at JP Hesser's Castaway 7 Studios in Ventura, California, the four musicians managed to record all of the preshow and intermission music for the Fare Thee Well run. So with no time to (pardon the expression) fret, Casal set to work, bringing in his CRB bandmate Adam MacDougall on keys, bassist Dan Horne (Beachwood Sparks, Jonathan Wilson), and drummer Mark Levy (the Congress). Never mind that Casal would have very little time to put the music together, or that the video was still being edited so he would have to create his soundtrack blind, or that Kreutzmann hoped to have enough music that it would never repeat during the five-show run-in other words, five-plus hours. It was an honor to be sure, but a pretty intimidating proposition for any musician, let alone one who has been a serious Dead fan for 35 years. He was asked by Justin Kreutzmann, a filmmaker and son of Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann, to compose some music to accompany the video component he was putting together for the intermissions of the Dead's historic farewell run. It wasn't until a few days later that I found out the music was the brainchild of guitarist Neal Casal, who is a current member of both the Chris Robinson Brotherhood and Hard Working Americans, a former member of Ryan Adams & the Cardinals, and a prolific singer-songwriter in his own right. Could it be one of the band members' side projects? Maybe a jam band I don't know about? At other times early Pink Floyd came to mind. “It's definitely not the Dead," I thought, “but there's something Deadish about it"-the long, slowly evolving jams, the weaving interplay between musicians, the psychedelic flourishes, the shimmering guitar tones. before the band took the stage and to accompany the intermission video highlights of the Dead's long, strange trip. I was fortunate to be able to attend both of the Grateful Dead's Fare Thee Well shows in Santa Clara, California, in June, and, like thousands of other Deadheads, I became intrigued by the music that played over the P.A.